This song has been stuck in my head for a couple of days. I had to jam out at lunch time. I didn’t spin around on the floor though. I’ll save that for the last hour of work.
May 2009
Lilacs.
Our lilac bush in the front lawn is coming to full bloom today. It looks beautiful and smells wonderful. Lilacs are my favourite flower and one of my favourite scents. I believe this can be attributed to Grandma City, for she had numerous lilacs in her backyard and there was always a vase of fresh cut lilacs on the kitchen table at this time of year.
Lilacs always remind me of Grandma City. I miss her.
WFR.
Today is my first “Workforce Reduction Day” under the effort to cut expenses at the company I work for. Salaries were cut by 10% across the board, and this is accomplished in my department by having one unpaid day off every two weeks. The days rotate in a systematic schedule so that there is complete fairness regarding the availability of three day weekends. I think that the manager of our department handled the matter well and came up with the best scenario to handle all of this. I have a lot of respect for my supervisor and the manager of the department. I’m happy to work for them.
Today is also the first pay day under the new plan. I’m afraid to see my paystub and the resulting impact of the cutbacks.
We have a company wide calendar that lists who is out of the office on any given day and we were given the task of listing our unpaid days off. I was one of the first to do so, and I listed each day as “WFR” (for WorkForce Reduction). Many others followed my lead and did the same. A few days later we received work from upper management telling us that instead it should be listed as “STO” , STO meaning “Scheduled Time Off”.
I took a little issue with this. And, surprisingly (?) I was vocal about it.
Here’s the thing. I believe using “STO” sugar coats the whole issue. I understand that the company is doing what it can to stay afloat and everyone reminds me that I wasn’t part of the layoffs that happened a few weeks ago, but still, I am now bringing home 10% less a week PLUS I have to work an additional four hours a week before I’m eligible for over-time when I’m on call AND I have lost my “pager pay”, the few extra hours I received for being inconvenienced with carrying a pager and being awoken in the middle of the night with random notifications. This pay cut has brought me below a threshold I had in my head, both financially and psychologically and quite frankly I don’t believe the issue should be sugar coated. It is a serious issue and by using the generic “STO” it seems like the issue is being swept under the rug and the company is operating as normal. But we are not operating as normal. Workloads have been increased, the stress level has tripled at the least, morale is very low and quite frankly we are doing everything we can do to just hold the place together and take care of customer concerns, let alone be happy about the whole thing.
I’m big on symbols. I find meaning in everything. I could document my time off with the slang term that’s starting to find it’s way into our corporate speak and refer to my day off today as “Punishment Time”, but I didn’t because that’s not appropriate. WFR says exactly what it is, WorkForce Reduction.
I understand that the powers that be are doing everything they believe they can to keep the company afloat and I guess I should be happy that I have a job in today’s economic climate. But I believe the situation warrants the respect and gravity that is actually present here, and this little sugar coating of changing “WFR” to “STO” is ridiculous. To even think that management had a meeting to discuss this and then told our supervisor that we needed to change our calendars is absurd.
It’s a little thing and I know that. I did the right thing and changed my calendar to “STO” like a good corporate (half-a-) cubicle resident1.
I may be there only 90% of the time now, but I still deserve 100% of the respect.
1 When we moved into our new headquarters in August 2007, new cubicles were purchased (along with all new office furniture) for the entire population of the building with the exception of our department. Our area, a separate room from the rest of the office, was given the old cubicles from our previous building (along with the old chairs) that are actually two quad areas, four “half cubicles” with two walls surrounding a common pole. Talking on the phone with a customer without the benefit of being surrounded by four walls lends itself to a LOT of “huh?”, “what” and “could you please repeat yourself, I couldn’t hear you”, not exactly the sort of thing a customer wants to hear when they are trying to get technical support on their technology based product.
Let Me Help You.
Today was a very busy day at work. Several strong storms passed through the area, knocking power out to thousands of customers. Of course, when the power goes out, technology-based stuff goes out as well, so it keeps it all interesting.
The Network Operations Center I work in provides support for a wide variety of products. We provide support to big corporations with hundreds of telephone lines, customers that are building websites that feature nothing but recipes and the grandma and grandpa that live up in the hills that are exploring the internet with their brand new DSL connection. When a storm is blowing through we get requests from business customers that need their phone lines forwarded to a cell phone as we try to determine what the cause of their outage is: is it power related? Did a crossbox get struck by lightning? Has a house fallen on a Verizon building? It goes on and on. And it can be a little tense, especially with the recent cutbacks at work.
What keeps it more interesting is that we still get the home DSL support requests in the midst of these mini-crises. Now I understand that they may have no idea of what is swirling around them, but if I am to be completely honest here, I sometimes dislike support the home DSL users, especially when they are particularly vague as to what’s going on with their computer or connection. Trouble tickets that read “please help Ruth find her e-mail icon” kind of raises my blood pressure. Nevertheless, I do what I need to do to get the job done, though I usually mutter under my breath a little bit. Okay, maybe out loud too.
What makes troubleshooting computer problems a little challenging is when the user that is having the issue apparently thinks that what the computer does for them is some sort of voodoo or magic and they obviously have absolutely no idea what is going on with the device that they’re typing their credit card numbers into. For example:
1. A woman called on Sunday because she was afraid that “they” were going to get her through her internet connection again. Apparently she had received an e-mail from the King of Idiocia (country name fictious) declaring that she was to receive $15 million dollars if she provided her checking account number. Said user provided this information and found herself quickly relieved of her identity. She has rebuilt her life and is afraid it’s going to happen again. I told her that no one wants to give her money.
2. Another woman with a computer science degree called after what sounded like a very tragic auto accident that resulted in a head injury. She wanted to know what Outlook Express did and if it was important to her. She kept losing her train of thought and asking where I worked.
3. A third customer called because she was trying to play PoGo and a message box kept popping up. She had no idea what the message box said, she didn’t think it was important but what was important was why PoGo wasn’t working.
4. And lastly, a man called at 11:00 p.m. after being without DSL for 1 1/2 days and needed his connection repaired IMMEDIATELY. I’m thinking the wife and kids were in bed and there was pr0n to be had.
Many larger companies opt to outsource their technical support overseas, and aside from some cultural and language barriers, this isn’t an entirely bad thing, however, most breathe a sigh of relief when they realise that I live and work relatively close to them. That being said, I’d like to ask a favour of anyone calling in for technical support and request that you have an idea of the following when you’re calling for a little help from the (hopefully) friendly geek:
1. Please give us some way of identifying you. Your name, mailing address or e-mail address will suffice. Sometimes your name doesn’t appear on the Caller ID and unfortunately my ESP doesn’t work so well over a dead DSL line.
2. Error message pop ups are trying to tell you something important. Don’t click OK, CANCEL or NEXT without knowing what the computer is trying to tell you. I have a hard time when you scream in a hysterical voice “There’s an exclamation point!” and then you click OK before you read the rest of it.
3. Have a general idea of what kind of computer you have. “Windows” doesn’t cut it these days with the various flavours out there. I feel kind of silly asking if there is a “start” button or a “little orb” in the corner. The same goes for your description of the issue: “the ‘puter went broke” sounds like you call your mommy to get your blanky and quite frankly I’m not going to take the matter seriously.
4. Never ask me to read your e-mail to you just because you can’t access your e-mail. I’m not interested in your love affair with the postman. (true story)
5. Turning off the monitor does not equal “shut down your computer”. I have finally stopped telling customers to shut down their computer and tell them now to just yank the plug out of the wall. And this is the honest truth: your computer will not work if the power is off.
6. When I have to tell you that a colon is a “capital semi-colon” or that lowercase letters are the “small capital letters” we have a problem.
7. Ditto when I have to spell out “mail” as “m-a-i-l” when you keep typing “m-a-l-e” to get your e-mail.
These are just a few of the pointers I wish to share with my gentle readers. I could come up with dozens more, but for now I’ll leave it at that.
Happy computing.
Happy Geek.
I just got back from Albany where I met up with Earl (who is working at the other office this week) to see the new Star Trek movie in glorious IMAX. Not only was my date quite spectacular but the movie was well worth the three hour round-trip I just completed.
I’ll write more later, but as a die-hard Trekker I can say that I LOVED the movie. There was enough references to the existing Star Trek to keep the geek in me happy and the way they handled the “reboot” of the franchise is quite nice. The only thing that made me nervous was the new transporter effect; while quite impressive visually it looked a little too violent for my tastes.
I enjoyed the movie very much to the point where I want to see it again very soon. If you haven’t seen it, go see it. It’s well worth it.
Live long and prosper.
Tuesday Morning Jam.
I am becoming a really big fan of Sylvia Tosun. She will be performing at New York’s Gay Pride in June, for now, enjoy her latest single (with Loverush UK!), “5 Reasons”.
This is a hot track and I love the sexy vibe of her music videos. This cinematography and effects of this video are both awesome.
Lunch.
So today I am working the early shift at work, on-call week is now just a memory, with the lingering affects of a lack of sleep. I’m a little sluggish today.
There is a cleaning crew working at The Manor today. It’s our annual spring cleaning. Earl contracted the cleaning service from his office to clean the house and I’m staying out of their way today. I look forward to going home to a cleaner house; I have been neglecting that duty lately. I still wonder where we can get a live-in houseboy.
It is a glorious day in Central New York though admittedly it’s a little chilly. The sky is clear, save for a few puffs of harmless clouds. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming and there is a slight scent of lilac here at the Hampton Inn parking lot, where I am parked eating my lunch and typing this blog entry. There are several wi-fi spots in the area but none of them are in the mood to chat. I guess I’ll have to upload this blog entry when I get back to my cubicle. Don’t tell the company that I did that.
Earl and I were planning on going to see ‘Star Trek’ tonight but we have modified our plans a bit for the week. He is going to be at his other office in Scotia tomorrow and Wednesday night, so I’m going to join him there on Wednesday night and we are going to see ‘Star Trek’ in the IMAX theatre instead. If we are going to do it, we are going to do it right! I have heard only good things (and that’s an understatement) about the film so I am eager to see it. The IMAX presentation should be awesome.
All in all life is good, aside from being exhausted from only 2 1/2 hours sleep last night. At least tonight I’ll be able to sleep in peace (and with the pager turned blissfully off).
Now I’m going to sit back and enjoy the sun for the rest of this lunch hour.
Life is good, especially when you make it that way.
Grandma Loon.
So today is Mother’s Day. This morning I called my sister and wished her well on her first official Mother’s Day. It was good to talk to her.
Last night Earl and I invited my mother over for dinner to celebrate the occasion, since she had plans with my cousin for today and I was wrapped up in an on-call weekend. Earl made a wonderful dinner for the three of us. We had great conversation and an excellent time. I was a blessed kid to have the “neat mom”; all the kids wanted to be in her group on field trips because she was fun. I have inherited my tendency to hear my own drum from her and that is something that I’m proud of. She has always encouraged me to be my own person and I hope that I always return the favour to her.
She’s a little whacky but she puts her heart and soul into everything she does. To add whimsy to the family I’m telling my nephews to call her “Grandma Loon”. She just loves that.
Earl and I sent her flowers at work so everyone could ooh and aah as they passed by her desk. She deserves the attention. She’s one of the best.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
Bewitched.
During on-call week I pick a television series to watch off of YouTube whilst I’m working in the middle of the night or waiting on hold with Verizon. This week’s choice is “Bewitched”.
It’s no secret that “Bewitched” is my favourite show of all time. I was always fascinated with the series as a child and I guess that fascination just kind of stuck around. I still find a great delight in watching any of the shows. Back in the 1980s, local independent stations would only show the third through eighth season (the colour episodes); it wasn’t until 1989 that Nick at Nite brought the first two seasons back to television, eventually restoring the prints to today’s expected quality. The first two seasons were colourized in 2000 (along with “I Dream of Jeannie”) when they were re-syndicated. The colourized episodes look colourized but not overly so, though I know from collecting photos and such that the colourization is often wrong, particularly on clothing and makeup shades.
As I grow older I tend to gravitate to the early episodes of the series and I prefer to watch them in black and white, simply because that’s the way they were originally filmed. The early episodes have a more “adult” vibe to them, especially the first 15 episodes or so. I’m in the minority of the fans that populate the various sites around the internet, but I like the show best before Tabatha was born and I especially enjoy all the original actors for the various roles that had replacements over the run of the series. (I even like the first Louise Tate, Irene Vernon, better).
There are a couple of elements from the first couple of episodes that didn’t carry through the series, for example, in the third episode the “Welcome Wagon” comes to visit Samantha in her new house. The doorbell rings and Endora “senses” who it is, remarking “Some of the girls making a call…” in a snide voice. The “mind-reading” element was played down after that, as some felt it was a little too dark for a comedy.
Watching “Bewitched” here and there during the week has made on-call a little easier to deal with. I’m looking forward to digging out the DVDs and picking up the eighth (and final) season when it’s available in July.
Quick aside: a Russian version of “Bewitched” has currently hit the airwaves over there and I have watched a couple of episodes. While I haven’t a clue as to what they’re saying, it appears they are following the original scripts from the first season of the U.S. version. It’s updated, of course but still quite fun to watch. It’s available on YouTube.
And here’s a commercial for the Russian version.
